When an enterprise has a machine that is spreading viruses on the network, the enterprise has to step through a series of tedious steps and take up a lot of everyone's time so that the enterprise can check all machines on the network for the problem machine. This is done in hopes that an administrator can find the machine that may be causing the problem. If the administrator knows that it is one particular machine causing the problem, then the administrator can go to each person asking if they know the machine in question. If the Internet Protocol (IP) being used is Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), then the administrator may never be able to find the culprit.
Moreover, if someone inadvertently enables DHCP on a network then the entire network is effectively disabled for anyone wanting to get a valid address and access to the network. Furthermore, the steps taken for finding this machine and for disabling it quickly are similar to the ones for finding a machine that is spreading viruses.
When an administrator has a machine that has been compromised in the enterprise's network and which only has a Media Access Control (MAC) address to know where the machine might be located, then the administrator has to search through every machine in the office trying to locate the problem.
Thus, what is needed is a mechanism, which allows for improved security tracking of assets within networks.